Keeping up with my blog (and the posts on my Patreon, for that matter) kind of fell off my task list the past couple months. I've been struggling with my writing since February.
First, my rewrite of DH01 went off the rails. It got bloated and meandered a lot, and I finally stopped writing on it. When something goes that bad, I usually cut to the last place where I feel the writing did everything I wanted it to, but I wasn't pleased with any of it.
At the same time, I was working on phase outlines for two or three other projects. Those were going better, but I wasn't happy with those either. My displeasure with these was a little harder to pinpoint until I realized that they seemed too long. I was using the phase outline system that my friend Zette usually employs in the writing of her stories, and while it was easier to progress with this system than it was with the plot-card system, I found I missed the plot cards and eventually gave up on those.
What enabled me to give up on all these projects was my friend J.A. Marlow's Twitch streams. Jam started streaming a couple months ago, and in one of her streams, she shared her plotting spreadsheets. She very kindly shared them with me when I asked her to, and I've been plugging my stories into them since then. Thanks to the plotting spreadsheets I feel I finally have a handle on my stories.
But doing all this plotting means I'm not writing fresh fiction right now. To fill that need, I've started work on creating a story web in Archivos for my Discordant Harmonies series. It's been going well so far. The pages for each element require a summary and a full article, so I've been setting up files for it in an Archivos Scrivener for the things I need to write in. I don't have artwork for the elements yet, but I have plans for getting it. I'll be posting these on my Patreon, so if you want a sneak peek, come support me!
